Jelena, a woman of character, rules an inn in an isolated place in the countryside. She lives with her two sons : Martin and Jakov. Martin has been married to Kata for 5 years, but never succeeded in having a child. Jakov sleeps with his mother in postures suggesting incest, but he is in love with Kata. Each night he hears her cries, the sexual acts with her husband inevitably finish with violence. One day, Jakov can't stand anymore, he leaves, and Kata is found dead the next morning. Two characters arrive then : an old man, who turns to be the father of Martin ; he settles and declares being returned to die here. And a girl, that Martin will keep as his new wife…

Ivica Matić should have directed himself this film he had written, but he died prematurely, at the age of 28.
Emir Kusturica finally does it, daring a highly taboo subject for the time : sexuality, incest. Emir Kusturica declares even in Le petit livre d'Emir Kusturica (Bouineau, 1993) : ”The brides are coming is undoubtedly the most courageous subject I ever made. It deals with the transmission of energy through the family, for a better comprehension, the whole thing put in image in a very stylized way.”

Produced by the television of Sarajevo, the film will however never be broadcast, being considered as too disturbing. The film is nonetheless of a great intelligence, and starts in a very promising way the future career of the young director :

The film is full of Greek mythology (the myth of Sisyphus with Kata raising buckets of water, the myth of Oedipus, for the incest, and the myth of Ulysses, for the return of the father).

The film presents a very family-oriented topic, through the central figure of the mother.

There is already a scene of magic realism : during a slow traveling along a wall, we see several times the same person speaking, as if she was duplicated. In an other direction, this scene precedes the vertical traveling lime kiln in Time of the Gypsies. One will also note the circular traveling filming Martin, desperate, from the interior of the circle of the drunk customers raping his wife… These plans are already strongly influenced by the style of Andréï Tarkovski.

When Jelena reveals to Martin that the person who has just left was his father, Emir uses the famous “trick” that Alfred Hitchcock developed in Vertigo by approaching the camera to the actors while decreasing the focal lens : the set seems to “run away” whereas the characters keep the same size, thus reinforcing their isolation.

A first cameo appearance is to be noted : Emir Kusturica plays truck driver. We can see his profile, smoking a cigarette (see below the last picture).

The Animals make irruptions in the film : a cow enters the inn and a small kitten gives a smile during the tense meeting between Martin and his father. Also, Jakov in a moment of poetry compares man to a fish, preceding the central topic of Arizona Dream.

Finally, there is also a Film inside the film sequence with a TV broadcast showing ice skating, and which seems more interesting to Jelena than the return of her former lover…